Further homage to the motto of Lemony Snicket's The Daily Punctilio:
'All the News in Fits of Print'

Neil Gaiman
won his lawsuit against comics tycoon Todd McFarlane on 3-4 October,
establishing his copyright interest in 'Angela' and two other Gaiman-created
characters in the McFarlane
Spawn universe, along with his copyright interest in five comics he had
written. He was awarded $45,000 (the full amount requested by his lawyers) for
unauthorized use of his name and biography to imply that he'd endorsed a recent
reprint of some of this material. Much more in back royalties may yet be due to
Gaiman, and it's speculated that as part of the settlement McFarlane will be
asked to release whatever rights he may actually have to the long-tied-up Miracleman
comic. Any Gaiman profits beyond lawyers' fees are earmarked for comics
charities such as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Neil: 'Well, it
really wasn't about money. It was about fairness, and sticking to agreements. I
may be nice, but I'm not a doormat.'

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the subject of a whole
academic conference
at the University of East Anglia (England) on 19-20 October: 'Blood, Text and
Fears: Reading around Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. I'm trying hard not to be lured
by such programme highlights as 'Meaning and Myth: Leitmotivic Procedures in the
Musical Underscore to Angel, Season One', 'Yeats's Entropic Gyre and
Season Six of BtVS', or the irresistible 'Unaired Pilot or Bad Quarto:
Textual Problems in Buffy and Shakespeare in an Internet Age'.

Thog's Masterclass.Mainstream Dept. '[They] walked off in
separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddlelegged clutching
their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no
sound they'd ever heard before. In the gray twilight those retchings seemed to
echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste.
Something imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being. A thing smirking
deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool.' (Cormac
McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, 1992)

David Langford is an author and a gentleman.
His newsletter, Ansible,
is the essential SF-insider sourcebook of wit and incongruity. He lives in Reading, England with his wife Hazel, 25,000 books, and a few dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add books and Hugos.